


Nightmare

by cvioleta



Category: The Originals (TV), The Vampire Diaries & Related Fandoms, The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, One-Shot, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-22 04:01:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15573309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cvioleta/pseuds/cvioleta
Summary: What if Season 5 was just a bad dream?  It would certainly explain the writing...





	Nightmare

Caroline doesn't need to sleep.

None of them do, really.  They _can_ sleep and continue doing so mostly out of force of habit; a carryover from their human years.  Even if the physical rest is no longer needed, the mental break is welcome.  Live a hundred years or a thousand, there's still a certain relief in closing your eyes and hiding from the world.

Until there's a nightmare, and you have that moment of knowing that what you see, what you feel, might not be real, and you battle to find consciousness again, forcing it, trying to think of some reality that will bring you back. It's like drowning and trying to find the surface, fighting for your life, afraid you might not be able to wake up and the nightmare will become your eternity.  Drowning, fire, being chased, losing someone so important that their absence leaves a huge and painfully hollow wound, an intolerable state that can be avoided if you break the spell, come back to reality,  _do something, count backwards, name state capitals, wake up, wake up, wake up!_

She wakes up with a start, unsure if this is reality, or if she's awoken in a dream.  She doesn't know what year it is, where she is, or what is real.  The room is a black as death and as silent as the grave.  Her skin is cold, clammy with sweat and she puts her hands to her face, half believing she'll find wrinkles and sagging skin.  It felt like she had been asleep forever, and even now, the details of the dream are fading, except for that last part, the part she'd fought to run away from in her dream.

The part where Klaus was dead.  

_It didn't happen,_ she tells herself.  It was a dream and this is reality and she is in her room. Even if she can't see everything, she knows that her dresser is over there to the left, and her antique vanity full of her makeup and hair products to her right, and over by the window, her writing desk. Down the hall, her daughters sleep - old enough now that she'd had to give them their own rooms, tired of listening to their bickering about privacy.  They are teenagers now, and she thinks for a moment about the last time she tried to see Klaus, when the girls were still very young and she went to New Orleans only to find him missing.

Caroline sighs and gets up, slipping quietly out of bed and heading to her bathroom to wash her face. She surely won't get back to sleep sweaty.   _Gross._ When she switches the light on, she's surprised to find the tracks of tears on her face.  She shakes her head slightly, and bends down, splashing water on her face and patting it dry with a towel. A little extra moisturizer -  _can't hurt -_ and she's ready to go back to bed.  

But when she settles herself under her antique quilt, she realizes right away that she can't go back to sleep. She is entirely too rattled by that dream, and it was a stupid dream. As  _if_ he and Elijah would ever stake each other like that. It made no sense, so why did it disturb her so?  She hasn't even seen Klaus in fifteen years and it's not like they  _chat_.  Oh, once in a while he will send her a text with a picture of where he is, or she'll send him an update on Hope's progress in school. She justifies the latter to herself by saying that it's her job, although she doesn't provide text updates to the parents of any of her  _other_ students.  And she stays firmly in denial about the effect his texts have on her, even if she  _has_ had to hide in her office with the door locked until she could wipe the stupid grin off her face and look like a professional again.  She can't let herself think like that; she's an adult now, an adult in a position of authority, a  _role model_ for young, impressionable minds.  Giggling over a text from a 1,000 year old serial killer is simply not a good look.  

There are reasons they are not together, and they are good reasons, but one of the reasons she's able to stay content is that she knows he isn't going anywhere. He is the most powerful vampire on earth.  He can't die.  There's nothing out there stronger than he is.  So perhaps  _someday_ , when she didn't have all of these responsibilities, when the girls were grown, if she wanted to reestablish their...friendship...she knows he'll be there.  

She looks at her phone, the tiny light green, glowing in the dark. No messages.  Surely someone would have called by now if anything was wrong?  Rebekah would.  It was just a dream.  

Caroline picks up the phone, pulls the covers over her head and scrolls to his name in the contacts.  She can't call.  It's entirely too late.  She'll text.  

She can't think of a single good excuse to text the man at 12:43 a.m., and she's normally quite creative.  Texts at 12:43 a.m. either mean someone has died or been in an accident, or they're booty calls. Not that anybody calls them that anymore.  

She hates how this is going to look, but she'll hate lying awake until a reasonable hour even more so finally she just types it out.

**I know this is stupid, but I had a bad dream.  Are you okay?**

The response comes back so quickly that he couldn't have been sleeping - or otherwise engaged.

**Hello, love.**

A flush warms her cheeks; she can feel it spread across her face. She can hear him say it, plain as day.  Caroline wants to jump in the car and drive to New Orleans, throw herself into his arms like a lovesick teenager.  _Stop it._

**Good.  Sorry for disturbing you, I'll leave you alone.**

Again, the response comes back so quickly that she's left wondering who taught him to type so fast.

**Please don't.**

And there she is, under the covers, like a 14 year old with a crush, grinning foolishly at her phone in the dark.  

Caroline doesn't need to sleep, and surely one night spent texting in the dark won't matter.

 


End file.
